Pubdate: Mon, 06 Oct 2014
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2014 Asheville Citizen-Times
Contact: http://www.citizen-times.com/contact/letters.shtml
Website: http://www.citizen-times.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/863
Author: George Fraley

TIME TO END EXPENSIVE, SENSELESS DRUG WAR

Want better funding for education, healthcare, better help for the
mentally ill and homeless? Stop the longest war the U.S. has ever
fought. Getting out of Afghanistan would be great, but=C2=85I'm not
referring to Afghanistan.

I'm referring to the never-ending "War on drugs''. There are more
drugs available now than 40 years ago when the war began. What we have
managed to do is raise the price for users and the profits for the
traffickers.

Think about every way we spend money on this fruitless war. The UN
estimates 230 million illegal drug users in the world, yet 90 percent
of them are not problematic. A Cato study says legalizing drugs would
save the U.S. about $41 billion a year in enforcing drug laws. We
spend about 14 percent of that sum on education and treatment each
year, yielding 80 percent of positive results.

We will never rid the planet of drugs, never stop them from getting
into our country, and some people are going to use drugs no matter
what. Take the financial incentives out of the drug business, then use
that money to improve our quality of life. We cannot continue to do
the same things over and over and expect different results.

George Fraley

Asheville
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MAP posted-by: Matt